agriculture and food security

As chronic hunger increases and food crises intensify worldwide, preventative action and extra investment could results in billions of dollars of savings each year, a new United Nations report has found.

United Nations agencies have urged greater international support to stave off severe food insecurity in Africa’s western Sahel; a region reeling from the effects of conflict and now threatened by drought and rising hunger.

With an estimated $220 billion of the global harvest lost to plant pests each year, the agency charged with fighting this scourge has adopted new standards and measures to safeguard internationally traded agricultural and forestry products.

Global food prices rose for the second consecutive month with the index for these commodities averaging 172.8 points in March, 1.1 per cent higher than in February, the United Nations food security agency announced Thursday.

Hunger is on the rise worldwide mainly because “people won’t stop shooting at each other,” the head of the United Nations food relief agency said Friday, telling the Security Council that if it did more to break the link between conflict and hunger, countless lives could be saved.

Driven largely by climate disasters and conflict, levels of acute hunger surged in 2017, leaving some 124 million people across 51 countries facing hunger crises –11 million more than the previous year, according to a new United Nations report.

Water scarcity and poor access to safe water sources pose major challenges for two-thirds of the world’s population, the United Nations food security agency said Tuesday, warning that worsening shortages could soon force people to leave their communities.

More than 4,700 veterinary health professionals who have just completed a United Nations training to tackle disease outbreaks are the new front line of defence protecting farm animals against deadly illnesses in 25 countries across Africa, Asia and the Middle East.

A “radical transformation” of food systems and food habits is critical to combat the growing scourge of overweight and obesity in Latin America and the Caribbean, the United Nations food security agency said on Wednesday.